Socializing space and politicizing financial innovation/destruction: some observations on Occupy Wall Street

Abstract

This short paper discusses two issues related to the Occupy Wall Street movement. First, a local urban political geography is presented in which Liberty Plaza is not the accidental place of Occupy Wall Street but a deliberate one, not only because it is located between the towers of global capital, but also because it constitutes a so-called “privately owned public space” (POPS). Second, a global financial political geography is presented in which I argue that the imprecise demands of Occupy Wall Street are a result not so much of the heterogeneous base of the movement but of the still largely unknown and “under-understood” nature of finance.

Keywords

• global financial crisis
• public space
• financialization
• zoning
• neoliberalism
• social movements